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MONO, ONT.—A seminal band tends to be bigger than the sum of its parts, but sometimes it takes the distance afforded by some time apart for those parts to realize the value of that sum.

The Grapes of Wrath had such a revelation a couple of years ago, when the cautious agreement to play a handful of reunion dates translated into cautious acceptance of the fact that, perhaps, this once-fruitful folk-rock endeavour hatched from deep childhood friendships might be something worth revisiting and hanging onto during the middle years. Real friendships are friendships for life, after all, and one can spend a lifetime as a musician chasing genuine musical chemistries. Why deny a chemistry that’s already, evidently, there?

The early fruit born of the reunion — two new tracks, “Good to See You” and “Take On the Day” — surface on a hits-‘n’-rarities compilation Singles, out Oct. 9.

“It was sort of back to what it was,” recalls co-founder/co-songwriter Kevin Kane, of the rehearsals leading up to a well-received appearance at the 2010 Fusion Festival in their hometown of Kelowna. “Surprisingly, it felt pretty good. The very first time we got together to practice the first song, we were like: ‘Oh, f---, we haven’t played this song together, in like, 20 years and it sounds pretty good. Do we even need to practise?’ ”

Fast forward to 2012 and a fannish music journalist who counted 1989’s breakthrough hit Now & Again among the most cherished records of his 15th year finds himself visiting with the original Grapes of Wrath lineup — the stubbornly youthful trio of guitarist/songwriter Kane (whose departure from the band in 1992 signalled its demise), bassist/songwriter Tom Hooper and his brother, drummer Chris Hooper — as it hastily wraps up recording sessions for its first album proper in 21 years at the bucolic Dufferin Highlands studio/guest house owned by longtime band pal-turned-comeback-producer Darryl Neudorf.

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Things have gone far better than anyone in the Grapes camp could have anticipated. Indeed, all three band members — who are mounting a small tour including a stop Oct. 30 at Toronto’s Mod Club — rare slightly in awe of the productivity they demonstrated during this whirlwind, two-week session.

“We did so much in the last two weeks. It’s amazing,” says Kane. “We’ve never worked so hard in our lives on a record.”

“It’s been record, record, sleep for a few hours, go into town every day to get more booze and food, record,” says Chris. “Other records, what did we spend on those records? One month? Two months? And most of that time was spent f------ around. It seriously was. It would be, ‘Oh, our friends are dropping by,’ and then it would turn into everyone sitting around drinking beer and then: ‘Ah, no one’s gonna record tonight.’

“This has just been every day. And these guys do most of the work. They’re just going all day and night. I’m just like a band manager or something. I come down downstairs and go: ‘Get going.’”

It’s good to see the Grapes of Wrath goofing around together like the junior-high chums they are and always will be.

The band disintegrated in spectacularly acrimonious fashion 20 years ago, abruptly ending one of Canadian indie-pop’s original success stories before, as far as most outside observers were concerned, it had properly run its course.

On the inside, naturally, it was a very different story. The starry-eyed, ‘60s-stricken folk-rockers were a platinum-proven commodity still capable of churning out effortless, jangling melodies and blipping across the mainstream-radio/MuchMusic radars with singles like “I Am Here” and “You May Be Right,” when they dropped These Days, the album that would turn out to be their swan song, in 1991.

Yet the usual bogeymen — differences in creative direction, warring egos, growing distaste for one another’s constant company and the restlessness that sometimes sets in when a band has grown popular enough to fret that it’s no longer behaving like it has something to prove on a nightly basis — were doing their work behind the scenes to rend the Grapes apart. And so, after a final gig in Vancouver on Halloween of 1992, they went their separate ways to spend the ensuing few years communicating with each other primarily through lawyers and barbed press quotations.

Time has a way of cycling back on you, though. Kane and Tom had sufficiently patched up their differences to mount a short-lived, partial reunion in 2000, but it wasn’t until longtime holdout Chris deigned to re-enter the fold that thought was given to a full-on Grapes revival. Even then, it took the intervention of Toronto indie label Aporia Records to broach the idea of an actual reunion album. (For the record, Tom notes, latter-years keyboardist Vincent Jones was invited to join in the reunion “just so there was no weird s---,” but declined.)

“I don’t think we looked at it that way,” says Chris. “I think we looked at it like, first of all, people were interested. But would we record again? No, that would never happen. But here we are, doing it. We shouldn’t have said it would never happen.”

“We both had songs, Tom and I, so it was, like, why don’t we try to do this?” adds Kane. “And I can honestly say this is the most fun and least painful and dramatic and traumatic recording experience these three people have ever had.”

Camping out together for a couple of weeks amidst the rolling farmland north of Orangeville definitely seems to have exerted a positive bonding effect on the reactivated Grapes.

For instance, the band and Neudorf — who shared the stage with Kane and the Hoopers for their first-ever gig in Grade 8, mystifying a roomful of fellow Kelowna 14-year-olds with a full-length rendition of the Who’s mini-rock opera “A Quick One (While He’s Away)” — spent some of their downtime revisiting the gory Super-8 movies they made as kids.

“I don’t know why I never noticed before, but watching them, I was like: ‘Wow, there’s a lot of bloody violence in these things,” says Tom.

Beyond Singles — coming out via the band’s old Nettwerk Records distributor, EMI — the Grapes promise the new songs are “really, really eclectic stuff.” In addition to the two unfinished tunes this writer was permitted to hear — one a most Grapes-like dose of paisley-printed loveliness, the other a beguiling detour into country twang — the new album will feature songs that revisit the punk and New Wave influences that shaped and coloured the nascent Grapes of Wrath and their 1985 full-length debut, September Bowl of Green.

“It’s not gonna be, I think, a shock to people,” says Tom. “They’re not gonna go: ‘Oh, f---, that’s not the Grapes of Wrath.’ I think it’ll be obvious to people who it is . . .

“I personally thought right away, this is going to be good. Because we definitely have a sound. We learned to play together. We define each other, in a way.”

Kane nods approval. “You come back to it and you realize that there’s a certain way that you meld that doesn’t happen with anyone else. And, for me, that’s the most exciting part of all of this.”

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